


anger be damned

by boykingofhell (alloftimeandspace)



Series: Codependency, Winchester Style [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bobby Singer's Panic Room, Canon Related, Canon Rewrite, Comfort/Angst, Comforting Sam Winchester, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester - Freeform, POV Dean Winchester, Protective Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester Detoxing From Demon Blood, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Sam Winchester-centric, Sick Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:35:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23702437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alloftimeandspace/pseuds/boykingofhell
Summary: i'll love you through it all, anger be damned.or, how sam's detox should have gone.don't @ me i'm still bitterif the details are wrong it's because i haven't seen the episode in a year and a half.i'm still bitter. bitterness has no end.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Series: Codependency, Winchester Style [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/499903
Comments: 3
Kudos: 68





	anger be damned

**Author's Note:**

> _I wear this crown of thorns  
>  Upon my liar's chair  
> Full of broken thoughts  
> I cannot repair  
> Beneath the stains of time  
> The feelings disappear  
> You are someone else  
> I am still right here  
> What have I become  
> My sweetest friend?  
> Everyone I know  
> Goes away in the end  
> And you could have it all  
> My empire of dirt  
> I will let you down  
> I will make you hurt  
> If I could start again  
> A million miles away  
> I will keep myself  
> I would find a way_

Dean's willpower was surprisingly, frustratingly quick to ebb. He found himself drawn to the basement stairs just as the sun started to sink in the sky, casting damn near heavenly rays of light across Bobby's cluttered living room. Dean rose from the shabby couch he'd flung himself down on, bottle of Jack in hand, creeping towards the stairs with a magnetism that could only be the combination of the whisky blistering his throat and the echo of Sam's voice calling after him, a mix of hollow acceptance and sheer disbelief crammed behind the bars of the neolithic panic room below his every heavy, stumbling footfall. Anger wavered into something softer, more pliable in his calloused hands, carried like a tangible hurt as he plodded down the metal stairs. He winced at every noise, like Bobby might appear and scold the younger, more boyish Dean he found haunting forbidden rooms and sneaking down the hallway to his brother. It was the chorus to a familiar ballad hummed lowly on summer nights behind the wheel, leather jacket slung over the seat, lips wind-chapped and sultry-bitten. 

The bottom of the stairs surprised Dean; his footing slipped and his hand went for the railing, too hard, and even Sam's fever-drowned self didn't miss the noise. Dean hissed out a curse beneath his breath and stilled outside the door. "Dean?" His brother's voice was plaintive, blind in its misery. Hoping without daring to hope. Dean set aside the bottle that he'd cradled down the stairs and reached for the door, opening it before he could consider a better option. Sam, held to the cot in the center of the room by warded handcuffs, looked up, guilt written across his face. "You aren't really here," he mumbled, eyes downcast, body tilted slightly as he lost sense of his center of balance, his body as it remained in relation to the rest of the world. Sweat had gathered at his temple, his eyes bloodshot, his voice strained and cracking under each painful syllable, his muscles tensed from the weight of the detox on his body. 

Dean stepped further into the room, shutting the heavy door behind him, striding towards Sam with a composure he didn't think he possessed. He knelt to Sam's sitting level, forcing his eyes to meet Sam's as he touched one hand gently, firmly, to Sam's knee. "I'm real. I'm here."

"You aren't supposed to be." Dean ignored this, reaching his free hand towards his pocket for the key to the handcuffs, freeing one of Sam's hands and rubbing the ache from his wrist before Sam began to protest, stringing words together with difficulty as the trembling resurfaced in cold, biting waves. "You can't, I-I fucked up. Can't trust-" A shuddered dry-heave wracked his body, his shoulders taut as he recoiled and dropped his head to his lap as the heaving subsided. "Easy, easy. Don't hurl on the shoes, dude." Sam was beyond jokes, miserably muttering, "can't help it," as he pulled away from Dean and curled, laboring every unsteady breath, on his side on the bare cot mattress. _Oh, Sammy._ "Stay here," Dean ordered, and regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Sam only mumbled an assent, eyes closed against the florescents boring down on him from the high, towered ceiling. He barely noticed Dean leave or return, his hands full with things for Sam. Anger be damned. The sight of Sam's strength and grace reduced to the shivering, whip-skinny frame alone on a dingy cot broke down every barrier Dean could have hoped to build. He could be angry later. When Sam wasn't in pain, wasn't clawing his way through his own personal hell, alone, teeth gritted bravely against the strain like a good soldier at war.

Setting down his meager offerings, Dean refocused his attention on Sam, sweat-drenched and dazed. "C'mon, kid," he murmured, hands sliding to the hem of Sam's shirt, sticky to his skin, pulling it over Sam's head, the rough, worn denim of his jeans following suit. He poured water from the pitcher on the table into a silver bowl, something for rituals borrowed from Bobby, though he'd never know, and dipped a fresh rag into the water. Sam's skin felt nearly boiling, emitting heat waves that clung to the salt-coated walls of the room and hung the smell of sickness, disease, decay in the air. He sighed at the cool of the rag on his skin as Dean washed his face, his feverish, flushed chest to the skinny ridges of his rib cage, to his long legs curled tightly against his body in an echo of the boy he'd been, once. Dean coaxed a glass of water to his lips, and then draped him in an Aztec patterned blanket from somewhere in the house above, tucked into a corner and smelling familiarly of Bobby's house and vague childhood memories. He carded a hand through Sam's tousled, tangled hair and hummed under his breath, the whisky draining from his body now and leaving something else; a hollow ache and an age-old sense of all-encompassing responsibility for the little brother weathered by hardship and stretched thin by tragedy, but still very much _his_ , accustomed, as set-in-stone as the rising and setting of the sun.

The day the sun stopped rising, that would be the day you'd find Dean Winchester abandoning his brother, to suffer alone. Anger be damned. Beneath his hand, Sam shifted restlessly, and Dean smoothed a palm across his cheek in a gesture that was both out-of-character and perfectly fitting, all at once, and whispered reassurances that may have been for himself than for Sam, for all Sam heard. Not that he would have admitted it. It would be okay. Anger be damned.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me/make requests at www.brighteyesandblacklights.tumblr.com


End file.
